JAR Inside the Research Podcast

Journal of Advertising Research
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This podcast gives listeners a look at the latest research articles published in the Journal of Advertising Research. Listen to authors describe their work and what motivated it, explore challenges they faced in the research process, and describe what they'd like to researched next. 

  1. Oct 22

    Better Early Than Late: The Timing of LGBT+ Brand Activism

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Kshitij Bhoumik (University of Leeds) to discuss his article, “How the Timing of LGBT+ Brand Activism Affects Consumer Responses: Better Early Than Late?” coauthored with Maximilian H. E. E. Gerrath (University of Leeds), Alessandro Biraglia (University of Leeds), Aulona Ulqinaku (University of Leeds), and Giampaolo Viglia (University of Portsmouth), published in the March 2026 issue of JAR. Kshitij explains the question driving the paper: the brand activism literature has covered what brands should say, which brands are suited to it, and how consumers respond, but not when a brand should take a stand, and it wasn’t obvious that the pioneering advantage documented for product and service innovation would carry over to campaigns that can divide and alienate consumers. Across seven studies, the team first used WARC and LexisNexis to identify 15 LGBT+ campaigns spanning 12 years and analyzed roughly 27,000 tweets, finding more positive sentiment toward brands that launched earlier. Experiments then established causality, including a lab choice study in which students read that either KitKat or Kinder Bueno had been the pioneer in supporting the LGBT+ community; 63 percent chose the pioneer and left with the chocolate they picked. Perceived effort emerged as the strongest mediator, with early brands seen as having worked harder for the cause, and talking up financial resources strengthened that perception for early brands but did nothing for followers. The practical takeaway is that timing belongs in the activism strategy alongside message and media: if a brand wants to support a cause, don’t wait, but don’t jump on every cause either, since the support has to be substantial and the specific effort behind it communicated rather than left at a social media post. Not every brand can be a pioneer, and a post hoc study found that a follower showing high effort, such as cutting ties with suppliers who don’t support the cause or changing employment policies, earned responses on par with a pioneer making moderate effort. Our conversation also digs into the project’s origins in a brainstorming session about whether long-time supporters like Ben & Jerry’s actually reap an advantage, the challenge of narrowing from brand activism broadly to a single cause when each carries its own history and level of divisiveness, and where Kshitij is headed next: other sociopolitical contexts and marginalized communities, consumers’ own political ideology as a moderator, and longitudinal work on whether sustained visible effort eventually matters more than having been first. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2485414 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

  2. Oct 15

    JAR PODCAST: Inner Child Messaging, Perceived Authenticity, and Consumer Responses in Advertising

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Jano Jimenez-Barreto (Universidad de La Laguna- Oxford Brookes University) joins me to discuss his research paper titled "Inner Child Messaging, Perceived Authenticity, and Consumer Responses in Advertising."  Dr. Jimenez-Barreto explains how his study explored new cognitive-efficient ways to trigger nostalgia in advertising by using "inner child messaging" instead of traditional self-referencing techniques. The research found that inner child messaging works better for hedonic products and experiences related to childhood, such as food, toys, and amusement parks, while showing limited effectiveness for utilitarian products.  Dr. Jimenez-Barreto discussed the theoretical underpinnings from psychoanalytic literature about self-authenticity and true self, as well as the challenges in differentiating between product authenticity and existential authenticity in consumers. We also discussed the importance of accounting for contextual variations in how childhood is perceived. Future research directions include exploring visual and multimedia representations of the inner child, measuring initial levels of nostalgia, and examining cultural differences in childhood symbolism. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2607792 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

    JAR PODCAST: Inner Child Messaging, Perceived Authenticity, and Consumer Responses in Advertising

  3. Oct 8

    Human vs. AI influencer marketing on Instagram

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Dr. Susanna Lee (Boston University) joins me to discuss her Journal of Advertising Research article, Human vs. AI Influencer Marketing on Instagram: The Role of Message Appeals and Perceived Humanness, coauthored by Ah Ram Lee (University of Massachusetts) and Jung Won Chun (Sejong University). Dr. Lee explains their study's findings that human influencers generally perform better than AI influencers, but AI influencers can be effective when using informational messages rather than transformational stories, and their effectiveness improves as they appear less eerie and more human-like, with social presence being a key factor in authenticity rather than just avoiding the uncanny valley. Read the full paper here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218499.2025.2593223 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

    Human vs. AI influencer marketing on Instagram

  4. Sep 10

    How Small Talk and Co-Viewing with AI Companions Boost Advertising Effectiveness and Persuasion: Chat, Watch, and Buy

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Yongwoog Andrew Jeon (Northern Illinois University) to discuss his article, "How Small Talk and Co-Viewing with AI Companions Boost Advertising Effectiveness and Persuasion: Chat, Watch, and Buy," coauthored with Yuhosua Ryoo (University of Minnesota Duluth), Sangwook Lee (University of Colorado Boulder), and Hye Jin Yoon (University of Georgia), published in the June 2026 issue of JAR. Andy explains the question driving the paper: as AI companions move into living rooms, can watching TV with one feel like genuinely watching together, and does that change how people respond to the ads on screen? A preliminary scenario study found that people imagining co-viewing with Alexa reported the same sense of shared viewing as those imagining a human partner. The main study moved into a living room-style lab, where participants made small talk about movies with either an Alexa Echo or a human confederate for one or three minutes, then watched a college football clip with food commercials while galvanic skin response sensors tracked their arousal in real time. Longer conversations made the AI seem more humanlike, a shift that never happened with the human partner, and that perceived humanness set off two chains: higher arousal and lower ad irritation during the commercials, which lifted purchase intentions for the advertised products, and stronger social identification with the AI, which made its own product recommendations more persuasive. The practical takeaway is to build the relationship before the pitch. Pointing to ChatGPT's move toward embedding ads in conversations, Andy argues that AI agents shouldn't sell too aggressively: let rapport form first, then persuade gently, or risk a backfire from users who expect a companion rather than a salesperson.  Our conversation also digs into the project's origins in the final year of Andy's PhD, when "what if we watch TV with a robot?" went from crazy thought to research team, the grind of in-person data collection, and where Andy is headed next: agentic AI and the question of what would make consumers comfortable letting an AI agent spend their money on their behalf. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2537503 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

  5. Sep 3

    (How) Does the Number of Followers Impact the Success of Influencer Marketing? A Construal Level Perspective

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we welcome back Kirsten Cowan (The University of Edinburgh) to discuss her article, "(How) Does the Number of Followers Impact the Success of Influencer Marketing? A Construal Level Perspective," coauthored with Ben Marder (The University of Edinburgh), Laura Lavertu (University of Strathclyde), and Jiayuan Li (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University), published in the March 2026 issue of JAR. Kirsten takes on a question that sits behind nearly every influencer campaign: does a bigger following automatically make an influencer more persuasive? The answer is not always.  Drawing on construal level theory, the paper shows that follower count works as a cue of social distance. Macro influencers, with followers in the hundreds of thousands, feel closer and more relatable, while mega influencers with millions of followers feel more distant and aspirational, and persuasion depends on matching that distance to the message. Macro influencers perform best with concrete, direct content, such as overtly tagging the brand and posting on their own channels. Mega influencers are more effective with subtle brand linkages, storytelling, and appearances on the brand's own channel. Secondary Instagram data and three experiments support this matching process, with self-brand connection explaining why the right pairing lifts purchase intentions. The practical takeaway is that brands and PR agencies should stop choosing influencers on follower count alone and instead write different briefs for different tiers: detail, brand tagging, and product-in-use content on the influencer's own page for macro influencers, and benefit-focused, lifestyle-oriented content and brand-channel collaborations for mega influencers. Kirsten also makes the case for working across tiers, since smaller influencers deliver community depth and engagement while larger ones deliver reach and awareness. Our conversation also digs into the project's origins in those top influencer lists ranked purely by follower count, the challenge of comparing engagement across wildly different audience sizes, the trade-off between realism and control when studying real versus fictitious influencers, and future directions like influencer expertise, short-form video, and what happens to authenticity when lifestyle influencers endorse categories outside their lane. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2482276 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

  6. Aug 27

    Is Similarity in Advertising a Double-Edged Sword? The Role of AI-Generated Faces

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Arno De Caigny (IESEG School of Management) to discuss his article, "Is Similarity in Advertising a Double-Edged Sword? The Role of AI-Generated Faces," coauthored with Gudrun Roose (Ghent University), published in the June 2026 issue of JAR. Arno explains the question driving the paper: decades of research show people respond better to ads featuring faces that resemble their own, and generative AI now makes it cheap to push that resemblance as far as an advertiser wants, so is more similarity always better?  The team first built an automated facial similarity measure by adapting the same face recognition technology that unlocks your phone, converting faces into embeddings and scoring resemblance with a cosine distance, then validating the algorithm against human annotators. Across two studies pairing participants' social media profile photos with AI-generated spokespersons in car insurance ads, the relationship between facial similarity and purchase intention traced an inverted U. Low to medium similarity helps, consistent with the familiar similar-to-me effect, but past an optimal point around 57% the effect reverses and purchase intentions fall, which the authors call the too-similar-to-me effect. The practical takeaway for advertisers is to resist the pull toward near-perfect matches and aim instead for the 50% to 70% sweet spot, and Arno adds a warning worth hearing: because generative AI makes it cheap to spin up millions of ad variants, a black-box optimization algorithm can drift into high similarity without anyone deciding it should, so similarity is worth tracking, and the paper's measure runs entirely on open source tools. Context matters too, since hyper-personalization carries more risk in sensitive categories like financial services and healthcare, while transparency and consent can turn the same technology into something consumers actually value, as with virtual try-on experiences. Our conversation also digs into the project's origins in the early wave of deepfakes, the data collection headaches that come with profile pictures as personally identifiable information (Prolific and MTurk were off the table, hence student samples and careful ethics review), and future directions like explaining the mechanism behind the effect and pinning down which dimensions of similarity, from eyes to skin tone to build, actually drive it. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2586185 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

  7. Aug 20

    Revisiting Direct Mail Effectiveness: Balancing Organizational Goals with Consumer Sustainability Concerns

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Jennifer Seokhwa Hong (Seattle University) to discuss her article, "Revisiting Direct Mail Effectiveness: Balancing Organizational Goals with Consumer Sustainability Concerns," coauthored with Chance Michael Ringor (Nordstrom, Inc.), published in the March 2026 issue of JAR. Jennifer explains the puzzle that motivated the research: despite years of predictions that print is dying, direct mail still accounts for more than a third of direct marketing spending worldwide, with $6 billion spent annually in the US alone, even as it carries a real environmental cost, with over 65 billion pieces mailed in 2022 requiring roughly 100 million trees and generating 3.5 million tons of waste, less than 40% of which gets recycled. Across four studies, the team finds that as consumers grow more environmentally conscious, their response to direct mail depends on who's sending it. For nonprofits, direct mail still outperforms email at eliciting donations, but for for-profit companies that advantage disappears entirely. The mechanism is perceived resource inefficiency: when a for-profit sends a glossy brochure, consumers read it as burning money and trees to sell something, but when a charity sends the same thing, they give it a pass as a justified way to raise money for a cause. In a telling boundary condition, nonprofits focused on sustainability lose the advantage too, since resource-intensive mail contradicts their own mission. The practical takeaway for for-profit marketers is that the familiar cost argument against direct mail now comes with a reputational twist, as consumers read channel choice as a signal of what a company values, though Jennifer is careful to note the studies hold open rates constant and measure response conditional on opening. Nonprofits, meanwhile, can keep leveraging direct mail's trust and emotional appeal, unless their cause is environmental. Our conversation also digs into the challenge of making physical mail feel real in an online experiment and future directions extending the core insight: that consumers judge the same resource use differently depending on who's using it, to organizations' adoption of AI. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2492430 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

  8. Aug 13

    Grit in Advertising: How a Promotion Focus Influences Consumer Variety-Seeking

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we speak with Logan Pant (Western Michigan University) to discuss his article, "Grit in Advertising: How a Promotion Focus Influences Consumer Variety-Seeking," coauthored with Blair Kidwell (University of North Texas) and Mark R. Gleim (Auburn University), published in the June 2026 issue of JAR. Logan explains how the team treated grit not as a stable personality trait but as something advertising can switch on in the moment, the way a Nike spot or Samsung's "It Takes Grit" campaign does. The evidence runs across a field pilot and three experiments including a coffee shop study where customers scanned a QR code while waiting in line and reported what they ordered today versus what they usually order. The key finding runs against intuition: grit is usually understood as sticking with something, but gritty advertising makes consumers more likely to try something new, and it does so by activating a promotion focus, where people see benefits rather than costs. The practical takeaway is that gritty appeals are a tool for getting people to explore rather than persist. Logan sees the clearest fit for challenger brands and new entrants, the ones who cannot outspend Nike or Apple and need consumers to consider an alternative at all. Fitness and wellness already use this language, but he points to less obvious cases like financial advisors encouraging portfolio diversification. Notably, priming grit produces results similar to priming promotion directly, which matters for brands that have already built grit into their identity. Our discussion also gets into the making of the paper, including the fact that only two of the original dissertation studies survived, the wellness company study came out of the review process, and Logan's candid account of learning how to read reviewer comments as a first-time lead author. On future directions, he discusses brand loyalty and product category as the obvious boundary conditions, since some consumers will not leave Apple or their preferred cereal no matter what the ad says. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2576965 To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QN And watch this and more content on our YouTube page:    / @journalofadvertisingresearch  And follow us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/journal-of-advertising-research/

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This podcast gives listeners a look at the latest research articles published in the Journal of Advertising Research. Listen to authors describe their work and what motivated it, explore challenges they faced in the research process, and describe what they'd like to researched next. 

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  • Creator
    Journal of Advertising Research
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    56
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © 2026 JAR Inside the Research Podcast
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    JAR Inside the Research Podcast